User:LA2

LA2 is the username for Lars Aronsson, Sweden, also known from Wikipedia, Project Runeberg, and other projects.

Useful links

• Swedish spelling dictionaries: sv.speling.org — dsso.se — Nordic Words — Viggo Kann
• OpenOffice projects: Lingucomponent — Localization — Native-lang — Danish (wiki) — Norwegian (wiki) — Swedish (wiki)
• Grammar checking: LanguageTool — Summer of Code 2006 — Granska

Diary

December 18, 2006: Google's writely.com is a web word processor. It has a built-in spell checker that automatically recognizes the language. It's Swedish spell checker behaves exactly like OpenOffice.org 2.0.4, which indicates the same Ispell/Aspell/Myspell/Hunspell dictionary is used for Swedish (Göran Andersson's dictionary from 2003). When I pasted the words from my test page, there were so many errors that the spell checker automatically shut down and I had manually to turn it back on again.

The Opera web browser (I tried version 9.10) has a built-in spell checker for web forms. The user interface is a bit old-fashioned, in that it doesn't underline the errors, but uses a dialog window that steps through the web form. On Apple's Mac OS/X it uses the system's built-in spell checker, but on all other platforms it requires the user install GNU Aspell. For Swedish spell checking on Linux and Windows, this means the (bad) old dictionary.

December 15, 2006: Two Danish OpenOffice developers meet with CST, Center for Sprogteknologi, a commercial provider of Danish dictionaries, to discuss how to improve the Danish spell checking dictionary for OpenOffice. Brief report on the 'dansk' mailing list. To me it seems unlikely that any useful solution would be found this way.

December 11, 2006: Version 2.0.4 of OpenOffice.org has auto corrections (AutoKorrigeringar) for Swedish, based on a static list of about 100 word pairs, e.g. HJE -> hej, MEDECIN -> medicin. Where do they come from? They're not part of the spelling dictionary. There are also word pairs for Danish and German (both have longer lists), but none for Norwegian.

Firefox 2.0 offers spell checking for web forms (e.g. wiki editing). There is a Swedish spelling dictionary by Hasse Wallanger, based on the Swedih Myspell dictionary of August 14, 2003 ("baserad på den svenska ordlistan från 20030814 för Myspell"). It behaves a little differently than the Swedish spell checker in OpenOffice 2.0.4, in that it allows free concatenation of words. It also only spell checks an initial fraction of a web form. In bug 360434 this is explained. Type about:config in the URL field and look for the variable extensions.spellcheck.inline.max-misspellings which defaults to 500. Double click on this value and change it to a much higher value, e.g. 15000.

December 7, 2006: I think we need a test case for the Swedish spell checking, that is separate from the development of the dictionary. As a pilot test, I'm starting a subpage /Test av stavningskontrollen.

December 2, 2006: I sign up for various OpenOffice mailing lists, and this wiki. What takes me here is the poor spell checking support for Swedish in OpenOffice 2.0.2. The spelling dictionary is version 1.3.8 from sv.speling.org, which hasn't been updated since March 2002. It only contains 24490 words (basic forms), some of which are misspelled. The myspell affix file seems to have been automatically converted from the ispell affix file.

Timeline

• 2006: The Swedish Academy publishes the 13th edition of SAOL.
• 2005: Volume 34 of SAOB ends at Tojs. The full work is expected to be completed in 2017.
• January 2005: Project Runeberg's OCR spelling dictionaries for Swedish and Danish are published within Nordic Words.
• April 2004: Public editing of susning.nu is closed. The user community migrates to the Swedish Wikipedia.
• March 6, 2003: My posting Svensk ordlista on the SSLUG-LOCALE mailing list.
• February 2003: On the Swedish web forum Gnuheter, I ask around for a business case for a Swedish dictionary (Affärsmodeller och fritt innehåll) without getting any useful answers.
• 2003: Göran Andersson takes back control of the Swedish spelling dictionary, now dsso.se, dissatisfied with some modifications made to it during the time it was at sv.speling.org.
• May 6, 2002: I join sslug-locale mailing list for speling.org.
• 2002-2003: I digitize two editions (58 volumes) of the classic Swedish encyclopedia Nordisk familjebok (1876-1926). This is more food for word frequencies and spelling dictionaries.
• October 2001: I start susning.nu, a Swedish wiki, which grows very fast. As a spinoff I return to computing word frequencies and compiling my own spelling dictionary.
• 1998: Göran Andersson hands over his Swedish ispell dictionary to sv.speling.org
• 1996-1997: Göran Andersson creates the Swedish ispell dictionary and its affix file.
• November 1996: Within Project Runeberg, the subproject "Nordic Words" is started, maintained by Anders Brun. No updates after December 1997.
• 1993: The Swedish Academy introduces computers in editing SAOB.
• December 1992: I start Project Runeberg, the Scandinavian e-text archive
• 1991-1993: I experiment with spelling dictionaries for spell and ispell.
• 1970s-1980s: A Swedish morphological spellchecker "stava" is developed at FOA/QZ in Stockholm. Traces of this might be available at KTH. Viggo Kann would know. Several later Swedish spell checkers with the same name exist. Various dictionaries float around. Linguists have access to proprietary lists for research purposes, and are not interesting in creating "open content".
• 1970: Major Swedish newspapers abandon plural forms of verbs.
• 1968: The polite use of "Ni" (You/Sie) is replaced with simple "du" (you/du), making Swedish conversation as simple as English.
• 1960s: A young computational linguist Sture Allén uses paper tape from newspaper typesetters to compute word frequencies of the Swedish language. Laying the foundation for the Språkdata department at Gothenburg University, he later becomes secretary of the Swedish Academy.
• 1945: Swedish public schools make plural endings of verbs optional. Students who opt not to use them, must indicate this and then stick to their chosen style.
• 1910: The polite use of "Ni" (You/Sie) is introduced in Swedish as a replacement for complicated titles, making Swedish conversation as simple as German.
• 1907: A major Swedish spelling reform does away with the combinations dt, fv, and hv.
• 1883: A new editor restarts the Academy's dictionary. The first fascicle is printed in 1893 and the first volume of "Svenska Akademiens Ordbok" (SAOB) is completed in 1898.
• 1874: The Swedish Academy publishes a spelling dictionary in one volume, "Svenska Akademiens Ordlista" (SAOL). Its 6th edition (1889) and 8th edition (1923) are out of copyright.
• 1786: The Swedish Academy is founded by king Gustav III. One of its main tasks is to compile a dictionary of the Swedish language. Work begins immediately, but stops already in 1814. New attempts are started in 1834 and 1855. A fascicle for the letter "A" is published in 1870.